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Mark Zuckerberg Will Take Two Months Off from Facebook for Paternity Leave

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221–230 of 328 posts

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Will Take Two Months Off from Facebook for Paternity Leave

#221

This is great. It sends the message that no matter who you are, prioritizing family over business is an option, especially when a newborn has arrived. I'm also willing to bet that it's good for business. An employee with better relationships at home is more likely to be productive at work in the long term.

Doesn't facebook gives dads four months leave? the message here could be hey, taking the full leave might make you look like lazy, the boss only took two months.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Will Take Two Months Off from Facebook for Paternity Leave

#222
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha ha! You probably should have been voted down, but OK, let's take a look at your idea. You are saying 1 out of 4 American workers shouldn't have kids[1]. If everybody followed your advice, a lot of pretty influential people wouldn't have been born: Steve Jobs, J.K. Rowling, Larry Ellison (OK maybe that works in your argument's favor). Jay Z. Abraham Lincoln. Barack Obama. I wouldn't be here, either; my dad was a sh…

I have seen that most of kids who have struggled in their childhood because of say low income from their parents or bad family have a kind of a fighting spirit. Most of the people who you see achieve greatness either say in sports or in engineering come from really poor and troubled backgrounds. Now compare that to the upper middle class and the rich whose kids have been given all the resources and you don't see much…

You have a massive survivor bias in your example of greatness in sports.

The odds of achieving greatness in sports is very low. If you come from a rich background, and want to maximize your chances of having a well-paying career, you do not go into sports. You go into law, or medicine, or banking, etc. Sure, the top players get paid well, but then look at what, say, minor league players get.

But if you come from a poor family, then sports is one of the ways to get out of poverty, because even if you can't go pro, there's still the chance of college athlete funding or becoming a coach for a school.

Engineering is similar, though less so.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Will Take Two Months Off from Facebook for Paternity Leave

#223
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha ha! You probably should have been voted down, but OK, let's take a look at your idea. You are saying 1 out of 4 American workers shouldn't have kids[1]. If everybody followed your advice, a lot of pretty influential people wouldn't have been born: Steve Jobs, J.K. Rowling, Larry Ellison (OK maybe that works in your argument's favor). Jay Z. Abraham Lincoln. Barack Obama. I wouldn't be here, either; my dad was a sh…

I have seen that most of kids who have struggled in their childhood because of say low income from their parents or bad family have a kind of a fighting spirit. Most of the people who you see achieve greatness either say in sports or in engineering come from really poor and troubled backgrounds. Now compare that to the upper middle class and the rich whose kids have been given all the resources and you don't see much…

Do you have some statistical evidence to support the claim that people from low income and bad families are overrepresented in the higher echelons of sports of engineering? I strongly suspect quite the opposite is true. It is not sufficient to view a few examples - after all, a huge portion of the population comes from 'really poor and troubled backgrounds'.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Will Take Two Months Off from Facebook for Paternity Leave

#225
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd take the entire year off just to fuck with their definition of "unlimited" vacation.

The point of unlimited is that it's not limited by HR, its negotiated with your manager. 4 to 6 weeks is common. More, it depends on your circumstances.

Then it's not unlimited and should not be billed as such.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Will Take Two Months Off from Facebook for Paternity Leave

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I were in his shoes, I'd sell my shares in that website Probably why you're not.

interesting! I wonder if you're right, or not. I could see both arguments both ways

There's the proof.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Will Take Two Months Off from Facebook for Paternity Leave

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think GP's point was _why_ they were building what they were building. Gate's was just doing work in his field, whereas Zuckerberg was working towards his ideology. Gate's didn't have the strong sentiment towards his business that Zuckerberg did/does.

Well ZuckerBerg is still in his early 30s, it's probably too early to say that he will stay at Facebook forever. People change with age as well, no matter what he may be thinking about currently.

Who knows, maybe some day he'll change his mind about people over 30 being too old to work for him.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Will Take Two Months Off from Facebook for Paternity Leave

#228
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That said, if that's the only measure then only the rich can afford to have children You say this like it's a bad thing. If only rich people had children we could nearly eliminate human suffering within a generation.

Sorry, but this is probably the most ignorant comment I've ever read on HN.

Why don't you enlighten us with a rebuttal, then?

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Will Take Two Months Off from Facebook for Paternity Leave

#229
post #207
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft software was not 'utter crap'. Word won by virtue of being better than WordPerfect. Excel won by being better than lotus. IE 5 was a better browser than Netscape 4, though in that case its superiority was not why it won. Even in the windows vs mac contest windows XP was a much better OS than the contemporary Mac OS, and arguably the best desktop OS of its day. Don't get me wrong. Microsoft software was crap…

I can agree with you about Word and Excel. I personally disagree about Netscape 4 versus IE 5, and I can remember both. You assertion about XP being better than Mac OS X, however, is hilarious. If that's true, why did XP die, and why was Mac OS X so radically more secure than Windows for the last 15 years running? Why was it more stable? Why did it work better? Why did it have a shockingly better UI? XP was crap and…

  You assertion about XP being better than Mac OS X
"windows XP was a much better OS than the contemporary Mac OS"

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Will Take Two Months Off from Facebook for Paternity Leave

#230
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took a little over three months off when my first child was born, and am in the process of taking the full four months for my second child. I know a half dozen people who have had children while working at Facebook and all of them have taken all (or almost all) of that time. I never felt pressure not to take leave. The hardest part was convincing myself that things would keep running without me.

Do you have to be married? Is it for anyone whose partner has had a child or only for your own child? Like, could you, in theory, have a baby making rotation of 3 "girlfriends" with 4 months of paternal leave each per year for an eternal vacation?

Looking after an under-one year old baby is not a vacation.
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